What is the price of your work?

By Tania Pimentel

Learning how to price your work and know how to sell yourself is perhaps one of the lessons you learn thanks to life's bumps and many underpaid jobs. Unfortunately it's a learning you rarely see in school, but one that you definitely have to acquire one way or another if you want to develop professionally and increase your visibility.

I learned the hard way, not by charging too little but by not charging at all. In my event organizing days I was contacted by a very prestigious global NGO to organize a massive event for them. I was of course honored that they had sought me out, and when they told me the "no money for being an NGO" story, I immediately said that money didn't matter. What was my surprise when I found out the day of the event that all the other vendors had been paid (and paid well) and I was the only person who had given away their work. I tell you this so that you understand that if you don't value your work yourself, no one else will do it for you.